


Here Where the World is Quiet

by FaustianAspirant



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Character Study, F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-17
Updated: 2012-01-17
Packaged: 2017-10-29 17:21:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/322288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FaustianAspirant/pseuds/FaustianAspirant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Reality is a matter of perspective. You, for one, have found great vivid gashes of truth in your fantasies, where your blown-glass identity bursts into waves of colour, and your words have grace and fluidity. And you have lived on your dreams: dreams where a vast, honeycomb city sparkles like melted butter; dreams where you lose sight of everything aside from the fact that your name is Kanaya Maryam.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Here Where the World is Quiet

_Oh fair enough are sky and plain,  
But I know fairer far:  
Those are as beautiful again  
That in the water are;_

_The pools and rivers wash so clean  
The trees and clouds and air,  
The like on earth has never seen,  
And oh that I were there._

_These are the thoughts I often think  
As I stand gazing down  
In act upon the cressy brink  
To strip and dive and drown;_

_But in the golden-sanded brooks  
And azure meres I spy  
A silly lad that longs and looks  
And wishes he were I._

_\- A E Housman, A Shropshire Lad_

-

Reality is a matter of perspective. You, for one, have found great vivid gashes of truth in your fantasies, where your blown-glass identity bursts into waves of colour, and your words have grace and fluidity. And you have lived on your dreams: dreams where a vast, honeycomb city sparkles like melted butter; dreams where you lose sight of everything aside from the fact that your name is Kanaya Maryam.

Your name is Kanaya Maryam, and today you wear a fragile lavender slip dress layered over a pair of worn, purple leggings. Later, you might change. You top the ensemble with a dark green sash, cinched just a little too tightly, and think that you will get around to fixing that later, too.

But today, like all other days, you have work – most of it self-relegated. Half the time spent dreaming; half of it paid in routine. You like to think that the balance suits you.

-

You meet Feferi. A sea troll, a reformist, breathlessly bright – and royalty, too; this should frighten you more than it actually does. As it is, it all seems endlessly fascinating. You let yourself be swept off-course into a whirlpool of effortless chatter – all of it blithely, impossibly earnest. She laughs, _effervesces_ \- and artlessly, she plunges you into a cycle of egalitarian visions, each perfectly shaped, like a series of glassy soap bubbles.

You don’t know what to say, faced with it all like the narrative you never sought for yourself. You think that to talk might disturb them. But you listen.

In turn – incrementally - she learns about you.

CC: )(ee, you’ve always struck me as kind of funny, Kanaya!    
GA: Oh  
GA: Dare I Ask Why    
CC: Not in a W--EIRD way, obviously.    
GA: Well  
GA: Thats A Relief  
GA: For The Record I Actually Gave A Thankful Sigh Just Now Thats How Relieved I Am    
CC: )(e)(e, well, good!    
GA: Anyway  
GA: Care To Elaborate  
GA: If Not In A Weird Way Then In What Sort Of Way Am I Funny   
CC: )(mm…   
GA: Im Waiting With Bated Breath For This Analysis  
GA: My Breath Only Became Bated After The Sigh Of Course  
GA: Just For Reference  
GA: Not During That Would Be A Respiratory Impossibility   
CC: Well, I mean your w)(ole situation just seems a little funny, I guess?  
CC: Mysterious creature of t)(e daylight, all alone in your woebrig)(t tower!  
CC: It’s as if you’re some kind of captive princess, or cursed maiden in distress!    
GA: Hey Now  
GA: Im Not The One With Royal Blood Here  
GA: If Anyones The Captive Princess In This Narrative It Certainly Isnt Me  
GA: Im More Like  
GA: The Malevolent Agent Of Lightness Or Something   
CC: )(u)(. OK, that’s pretty cool too, I guess!  
CC: But seriously, doesn’t it ever get a little FRIG)(T--ENING, living all on your own out in t)(e sun?    
GA: I Dont Know  
GA: Dont You Find The Fact That Your Lusus Is A Gargantuan Tentacle Monster With The Capacity To Wipe Out All Of Trollkind With One Shriek A Little Frightening Too   
CC: )(ee)(ee, good point.  
CC: I guess it all depends on w)(at you’re used to, right? 

It does - and as you meander through the garden and laugh away the light, you wonder if she plans on being rescued from it all. God knows you’ve sometimes considered it. Here, at least, there is space enough to _be_. For a shuddering second, you imagine the weight of a thousand fathoms of sea and self-delusion, and bite down on the urge to choke. But the screams of the waves are absent here; they have tailed into streams of sibilant wind, and curled up in hush amongst the leaves. Outside, you can see as far as the soft, furled edges of the trees, where you have decorated your own borders, and you squint to catch sight of the desert stretch beyond.

There is nobody there, but for the sake of thoroughness you take a chainsaw.

-

Aradia is a crackle of lightning; a dizzying burst of flame. Vriska is more like a hurricane. _“My best friend, ever, and she’s incredible brave and nice”_ , Tavros prattles excitedly of the former. _“Evil, malevolent, piratin’ scum a the sea”_ , Eridan tells you of the latter, with no less relish. You hear of their would-be battles, once-removed from the real life carnage – and it’s not that you _couldn’t_ , you decide, but you doubt they would ever believe you. So when you finally meet them officially, it is not to match fire with echoed fire, but to be audience for the one, and mediator for the other. You have a talent, it seems, for hiding the worst – smoothing the vicious furrows of Vriska’s forehead, for here there is so much to hide. _Let be_ , you say, because someone has to.

Vriska is a hurricane, and you welcome the sight of rain in the desert. But it’s not enough, and you thirst for – for something.

-

There is an eye to every storm, and she is no different. Through the dense thicket of rhetoric woven about her, you think you catch glimpses of a huddled girl, naked of all bravado. You would like to think you see through her completely, but that probably isn’t true. You would like to think she respects you for it too, but – well. That probably isn’t true either.

When it all goes to hell, you are ready for her regardless.

AG: So I guess you’re here to yell at me, too.  
AG: Gr8! Go ahead! Have at it.  
AG: Course, it’s not like there’s anything left to say seeing as everyone else has already taken their 8est shot at ripping me to shreds,  
AG: 8ut SOME people seem to get some kind of crazy kick out of repeating the same 8oring platitudes these days.  
AG: So go on. I know you want to.    
GA: Do You Actually Want Me To Do That  
GA: I Mean I Wasnt Planning On It But I Guess I Can Work Up A Decent Amount Of Righteous Indignation If Requested   
AG: … You’re not mad at me?  
AG: Tchyeah, right, THAT I can 8elieve!   
GA: I Never Said That  
GA: I Just Dont See What Use It Would Do  
GA: Lecturing You Doesnt Seem All That Productive To Be Honest  
GA: I Mean I Reckon Youre Probably Sorry For It    
AG: Yes!   
GA: I Guess Thats Enough Then   
AG: Whoa, thanks.  
AG: Man, I wish everyone else would actually LISTEN to apologies like you.  
AG: I mean, yeah, I screwed up.  
AG: 8adly.  
AG: I get that, I really do!  
AG: I mean, part of me is just like, what the hell, Vriska?  
AG: How did you let some preposterous little game get the 8etter of you like that?    
GA: Games Are More Important Than People Give Them Credit For    
AG: Yeah. Yeah! You’re totally right a8out that.  
AG: And the mind-8ogglingly ridiculous thing is that it’s the whole O8JECT of a game to win, and then when you go the 8xtra mile and DO, they’ll practically crucify you for it!  
AG: And sure, most people say they play to win, 8ut they don’t really mean it.  
AG: 8ut I do!  
AG: I totally do.   
GA: Would You Really Call Attempted Murder And Achieved Mutilation An Extra Mile  
GA: Id Say It Merits At Least A Stretch Of Kilometres In The Scheme Of Things   
AG: Heh, well yeah, true.  
AG: Even if it WAS more or less unintentional.   
GA: Right  
GA: Im Thinking Your Take On Intent Is Slightly Different To The Standard Usage  
GA: But Well Run With It    
AG: Yeah, that one went str8ght over my head.  
AG: Whatever.  
AG: Wow, you must think I’m a total fl8ke.   
GA: I Think Youre Holding Together Pretty Well  
GA: Considering    
AG: Course I am! I’m not completely fucking pathetic.  
AG: Look, I’d 8etter go now.  
AG: We’ll talk l8ter, OK? 

As you sign off, you can’t shake the feeling that you have passed some kind of unspoken test. You would be happier if you knew what it actually was. But you’re not _unhappy_ about this.

Perhaps you were the first to understand her, in some fleeting, unconscious way.

Perhaps you ought to stop piling significance onto one, brief moment of connection.

The second instinct triumphs, and as you suspected, nothing ever comes of it – though she now confides in you, to a small, thrilling degree. On some level, you know you could match her. But that would be wrong for the both of you – and the fact that you recognise this immediately discounts you from any further right to even think of it.  
So you fold away your disappointment into the covers of your books, where trolls are brave, and tell their would-be assailants things like _take me with you on your adventures_ , rather than _please don’t hurt yourself_. And, in doing so, you shed your flimsy delusions like so many fragile garments; a grim-faced striptease down to normalcy. You purge yourself of fantasy, sanding down grainy, irrational surfaces until they gleam with placid acceptance. You smooth yourself over. Sublimate.

You will not say _take me with you_. You will not even say don’t. Instead, you will say _be careful_ , and mean it more than anything else you could ever have told her. She needs this. Forget whether or not you need it too.

And now, with a lingering sense of rawness, you head outside, because, hollowed out or not, it is time for you to clip the hedges.

-

GA: So What Happened   
AA: 0h n0  
AA: st0p it seri0usly  
AA: y0ure n0t g0ing t0 find 0ut it isnt s0mething that’s meant t0 take place right n0w   
GA: Meant To  
GA: Interesting Phrasing  
GA: When You Say That I Suppose Were Talking About Psychic Certainty Right   
AA: s0mething like that  
AA: d0es it really matter   
GA: It Matters    
AA: why   
GA: Im Not Going To Try And Fight It If Thats Why Youre Worried  
GA: That Would Be Hypocritical  
GA: Out Of All People I Understand The Limitations Of Supernatural Foresight  
GA: Id Just Like A Little Clarification Is All  
GA: So Tell Me  
GA: What Happened  
GA: And Also  
GA: Whats Going To Happen   
AA: what is the p0int 0f all this ga   
GA: Avoidance Isnt Going To Ameliorate The Situation  
GA: I Just Think That Talking About It Might Help You Come To Terms With It   
AA: im 0k with things as they are   
GA: Thats More Or Less Why Im Worried    
AA: are y0u w0rried f0r me m0re than any0ne else   
GA: Its Not Really A Finite Thing

Sometimes, though, you think there is a limited amount of anger in the world, and Aradia’s has been filtered out and drained into Sollux as supplement to his own.

TA: and then ii ought two be locked iin 2ome ob2cure 2ectiion of the galaxy re2erved for treacherou2 fuckup2, where every niight each iinmate get2 2tabbed iin the bulge multiiple tiime2 wiith a ru2ty fucking four tiined eatiing uten2iil.   
GA: TA   
TA: maybe they can 2liit me open and carve out my iinte2tiines iinch by iinch and then strew them all over the cell floor liike garii2h goddamn confettii.    
GA: Sollux   
TA: and iit wouldnt even come CLO2E to what ii de2erve, FUCK.    
GA: TA  
GA: Stop It  
GA: What Happened Isnt Even Remotely Your Fault    
TA: whoa no 2eriiou2ly you are NOT goiing two deraiil thii2 2niivelliing 2elf piity vehiicle by makiing all kiind2 of dumb excu2e2 for me.  
TA: ii could have KIILLED her, ok?  
TA: for a whiile ii thought ii DIID kiill her.    
GA: Then I Suppose Intention Means Absolutely Nothing To You    
TA: what.    
GA: Sollux  
GA: Did You Intend To Hurt Her  
GA: Were You In Possession Of Any Semblance Of Lucidity Whatsoever At The Time  
GA: Were You Even Capable Of Making The Most Basic Of Decisions Malevolent Or Mundane  
GA: I Think The Answer Is Obvious Here  
GA: And You Are Being Deliberately Obtuse Out Of Some Bizarre Penchant For Emotional Self Flagellation   
TA: no, look, ju2t 2top beiing all 2anctiimoniiou2 and 2upportiive and let me torture my2elf wiith thii2 already.  
TA: real friiend2 hang, draw and quarter each other on demand, kn.   
GA: Real Friends Also Forgive Each Other After Impromptu Fits Of Condiment Induced Delusion  
GA: For The Record   
TA: wow, that ii2 liike the 2hiitiie2t aphorii2m ever devii2ed, no joke. 

Later, he comes to terms, dusted over with a dull film of acceptance – but he never lets it thicken into forgiveness. And underneath it all, he is still scraped raw with the shuddering force of the experience; everyone is. The sight of Aradia under the rubble in bloodied fragments is seared into your mind perpetually – no matter that you never actually saw it; it haunts all the same. It is the first time you have been confronted with Alternia as is, not your own watered down little hollow - but it seems as though everyone knew that before, knew something you didn’t. It seems you are apt to experience these things second hand, if at all.

You try to quell the heat of the aftermath as best you can. Try to give an even hand to each.

Vriska despises that.

AG: You can’t 8e some kind of neutral ar8iter 8etween us all. That’s a wiggler’s game, Kanaya.  
AG: Everyone has allegiances. It just depends on how well some people keep them hidden!    
GA: Well  
GA: Then Maybe You Ought To Stay On My Good Side   
AG: …

Another hoop successfully jumped. Another victory you can’t quite make sense of.

Today, you wear a simple black skirt, but you pair it with a bright red jacket. You’ll hold off pruning the plants for now. Let them grow.

-

And the game is little more than a whirl of motion; accumulation of the inevitable. For you, though, it matters. It tells you that to be protected is not _protection_ , not necessarily, and that the worst, the most hideously _wrong_ , is not barred from happening. Far from it; it happens, and happens in circuitous spirals.

And amidst continual strife and political turmoil, you tell yourself it’s not the end of the world if the girl you like is flushed for another troll - but it lacks the usual impact when the world really did just end. So, instead, you focus. And you fall apart a little at the edges – not because of her, but because of the game’s innumerable little pressures. Thieves have fewer responsibilities to tie them down than Sylphs. But you’re used to responsibility.

These days, you wear your work clothes. The garden is little more than a dense, tangled blur.

You search.

You mediate.

You fight.

-

Your land shudders in great, seismic jolts which pulse through the drenched crust, sending shivers of water through the sparse, wet woodlands. You and Karkat cling to the surrounding trees for support, watching as the sky starts to tear itself apart. It would not be surprising if the entire planet were in uproar - each surface convulsing, breaking, descending to debris – if, indeed, there is anything other than light, and fierce, crashing ocean here; anyone other than you.

Fierce tendrils of thickening smoke twine themselves about the sharp, flickering rays of the atmosphere. The air has dissolved into a heady, acrid heat, stinging your eyes and cloying in your mouth. There is soot streaked all over your front from the ashen snowfall that accompanied the volcano’s awakening: a preliminary burst of force which left you frightened that something had backfired, some elemental facet misplaced, but it seems there is a certain order to these things, a logic best left unexplained -

_This is your choice, Echidna hisses close to your ear, sibilant and strange._

You can’t hear anything now. Sound has been crushed under the vaulting feet of roar and reverberation.

_Recent events have proven I’m not altogether excellent at choices._

Your footsteps might patter softly, though, as you scramble your way across to Karkat.

_Then hazard a guess._

Using one hand to steady yourself against his shoulder, you hold out the other, palm first. And wait. You don’t dare waver.

He meets your eyes – glassy with moisture, and liquid, unfathomable yellow – and more or less crumples.

“Karkat,” you say, though the sense of it is flooded by loud bursts of shuddering motion.

He nods nonetheless. Briefly, his closed fist unfurls; encircles your hand. He surrenders the ring. You give his fingers a careful squeeze before a sudden lurch breaks you abruptly away. Instantly, a bright flash of lava erupts fifteen metres away from where you stand. You bother teeter for balance. Straighten. And run.

The gold bites into your clenched hand as you run, carelessly, madly, losing yourself in the ash-fogged forest – outpacing your own explosion. And as you run, you laugh, and it scrapes through your throat like a crazed thing, crazed and delighted – crazed, and delighted, and giddy with glee. Karkat shrieks something that could mean _you’re insane_ , but emerges instead as a matching cackle of mirth, as the two of you sprint in tandem, choking on smoke and triumph.

-

The sky is clearer now. A deep, brilliant blue. Black veins flicker through the cooling lava, like something organic. The breeze tosses grainy air through your eyelashes, and Karkat’s face was fresh with the shadow of Jack’s betrayal - and it occurs to you that you never knew Alternia, not really. You were never adept at gauging their standards, playing their games, sifting through the detritus of their countless unwritten rivalries. Like a gull, winged over roiling waters, you drifted above it all – and missed something vital, perhaps, in your freedom.

And now, poised at the edge of the forge, crowned in blistering heat and diminishing smoke, it doesn’t even come close to mattering.

You draw your arm back, and cast the Queen’s ring as far as you can muster. It seems to hang in the air for a purposeless second, before spiralling down into a raw, red fissure cut through the charcoal-grey pit.

-

You remember an old Alternian truism: _to see, we must shatter_. The brittle fragments of our existence can cut cleaner than anything smooth-forged and safe. Only in true peril do we reveal who we really are – and only when pushed past breaking point does our true identity force itself through the veneer. The rest is just pretence: a stop-gap mask, or a well-placed background.

For you, it used to be different. It was never about you, exactly, but about who you wanted to emulate.

The shadowed dinge of the Veil unnerves you, crowds you like the promise of some arcane dread. Tavros is splayed across the floor like a broken insect, and really, you think, that ought to make this easier: to disassociate; defect from the reality of what you are about to do. It doesn’t, and you don’t.

“This sleep’s better than any anaesthetic,” you reason, forcing your gaze appraisingly upwards. “Being that we don’t actually have any anaesthetic.”

Equius nods, impressed that you have caught on so easily.

_You’re so damn reserved, Kanaya! she had once told you, bright blue text bleeding though the dim screen. You just need to cut loose!_

Slowly, you run your tongue along the back of your teeth, forcing yourself to focus on the movement and nothing else. Coolly: “We’re about to die. Tavros might as well walk beforehand.”

True enough.

Your claws graze the handle of your chainsaw. This isn’t mutilation. It’s sculpture.

So you cut loose.

As you make the first incision, you imagine that you are hacking away at the charade, at all the superfluous layers of self-deceit. You imagine it is you, not Tavros, crushed to the floor like half a bloodied spider, and you are redefining the borders of your own being. Here, in a flood of grey upon grey, and a dull gush of russet, you paint yourself anew in startling, vivid bursts of imaginary colour.

And when you emerge, bright-edged and brilliant, from the teeth of the blades, you cease to know precisely who or what you are.

-

Several sweeps after examining every abstruse, meticulously worded phrase of her writing, you meet tentacleTherapist.

Several hours later, you continue to meet her.

After that, it’s all fairly inevitable. Later still, you begin to wonder if, having met her, you ever managed to succeed in knowing her. And that – that is extremely exciting. You’re sick to death of knowing people, and, moreover, knowing better. But she takes every preconceived notion you ever possessed, and pares it down to its essential fallacy with the slice of a few well-placed words.

You like to think that you do the same with her egregious misconceptions.

GA: So Answer Me This  
GA: Using That Human Faculty Of Honesty Im Almost Certain You Probably Maybe Possess  
GA: Or Failing That  
GA: At Least A Passable Imitation  
GA: Arent You In The Least Bit Concerned About The Blackout  
GA: I Mean Are You Even Somewhat Frightened Of The Possible Ramifications   
TT: Needless dread of an event you’ve taken great pains to assure me is inevitable would be a little foolish, no?  
TT: I daresay I shall plunge into all manner of shrieking histrionics when the time comes.  
TT: As for now, I’m pacing myself.    
GA: I Honestly Dont Know Why I Was Expecting Anything More Than Another Evasion  
GA: But That Aside  
GA: What Does Logic Have To Do With Fear  
GA: I Wasnt Asking Whether It Would Be Foolish   
TT: No. Rather, in a bold flourish of sanctimony, you were asking whether or not I was afraid.    
GA: Yes Sanctimony Was Precisely The Effect I Was Shooting For  
GA: But  
GA: Amongst Attempting To Antagonise You Through My Continual Efforts To Prevent You From Doing Something Profoundly Idiotic  
GA: I Was Also Wondering If You Are Really So Blasé About This Out Of Choice  
GA: Or Out Of Tortured Necessity    
TT: A meandering trail of interrogation strewn with the dense foliage of myriad irrelevancies.  
TT: I’m forced to conclude that either you’re deliberately dragging us off the beaten track into the hazy realms of emotional manipulation for sheer spite,  
TT: Or that you actually care. 

Eight conversations in, you wonder if you will ever learn to eschew the shadows you never learned to navigate – or, indeed, if it is even possible to wriggle out of the caged dichotomy woven between light and dark.

Somehow, you doubt it.

You had wanted so badly not to intervene. It had been your first and only resolution since arriving on the meteor. And then, after a few hours, you ceased to want it quite so badly. A little later, you had forgotten every strict inner sanction you ever imposed upon yourself – once again, proving your pathological incapability of choosing to lie back and _let be_ – and instead, once more, you find yourself chasing the bright coattails of another girl who does not stop to consider consequences.

This time, you refuse to let the balance become so thoroughly skewed.

GA: Both Are Entirely Plausible Deductions  
GA: But Neither Strike At The Heart Of The Enigmatic Motivations They Were Intended To Pierce  
GA: I Can See How This Line Of Questioning Might Be Mistaken For An Elaborate Conversational Gambit Designed To Distract You From Your Original Purpose  
GA: But Frankly Im Just Curious  
GA: Are You So Adamant About This Because Of Genuine Resolve  
GA: Or Because You Know It Happens Anyway   
TT: It can’t be both?    
GA: I Guess Its Possible   
TT: I’m not Dave, Kanaya.  
TT: I don’t couch every tactical decision in the language of temporal inevitability.  
TT: I’m doing this, not to play the game, but to defeat it.  
TT: I don’t suppose that’s honest enough for the purposes of your original stratagem?    
GA: Its  
GA: Passable

You approach Rose Lalonde like a competitor on a battlefield, and leap into conversations like an intricate game of strategy.

If you are to become locked within this particular chase yet again, you resolve to run faster, this time – and fight.

-

You stand fast. You fight. And a white-fiery lash of incandescence cuts clean through you, severing the thread between you and the waking world.

Asleep, you dream in darkness. You sift through a volatile flicker of recollection, surfacing to company – from whom you learn that you are not beaten, not yet.

You sleep. And slowly, _slowly_ –

\- you rise up.

Plunged into a sweeping, interminable metamorphosis, you feel every facet of your body crack, and light pours out from between the splinters. Caught in the powerful rush of your own being, you observe as from the centre of a vortex, watching cells, thoughts, _purpose_ palpably realign.

The filmy membrane between sleep and consciousness snaps.

All of the old, sullen doubts and prickling inadequacies resolve into a single point of clarity. _To see, we must shatter._ You now know, down to the last detail, exactly why that is wrong. One might as well say _to be, we must be_. One might as well say: _rebuild_. Not live life confined to a single flash of impact.  
You think of Feferi, who in her own, keenly vivacious manner, was prepared to guide an entire civilisation through the process of redefinition. You think of Rose, who realises that, once constructed, anything can be destroyed.

You stand, flooding the dim furrows of the lab with a strange surge of illumination.

You have been, quite definitively, cut loose.

And god, but you’re no longer scared.

-

And yet, true to form, you still bite down on your disgust and do what needs to be done. You remember the unexpected flash of ferocity which streaked Feferi’s eyes just before the end – and now, you think you understand it.

It isn’t – isn’t vindictiveness, exactly. It bears closer relation to what Terezi might call justice.

And so, Eridan dies, a little more easily than anyone would have expected. You think you are finally beginning to understand Alternia, understand the warped reciprocity between crime and countermeasure. But it’s borrowed, and borderline defunct. There will be no use for it later. You think you might just be proving a point.

Royal blood and tattered shreds of flesh glimmer wetly around your knuckles and fingertips.

 _Didn’t think you had it in you_ , rails the glib voice in your head, and your heartbeat gives a remembered thrum. No, you didn’t always. You kept it harnessed – primarily for her sake, but also for everyone’s.

And now, she stares at you from the floor, dumbfounded, as if one of her doomsday devices miraculously shuddered into action, and you are her own personally wrought apocalypse. Something has clicked, or sparked something deeper – signified by a look that astonishes with its very fervour. It tells you that you have passed all of her esoteric little tests, all of them, including the only one that ever mattered - and that whatever you ask, you could take, without question.

You don’t move.

You are tired of doing tricks for her. Tired of tearing through innumerable, arcane trials of her devising – tired even of your own victories. You honestly couldn’t care about whatever tacit judgement she has finally placed on you.

You’ve outgrown this.

And so you turn. Wordlessly, you leave. Your last glimpse of Vriska Serket is that of a huddled girl, gaping at you in sheer bewilderment. Naked of all bravado.

-

What happens later doesn’t even surprise you. And yet, seeing her slumped corpse stained bright blue provokes the smallest glimmer of guilt - because in the end, you never really did want to tame her. All that time spent posing to yourself as her quasi-moirail, there was nothing you ever did for her by way of conciliation. You were far too squeamish to blunt the bright-edged blade that is-was-now-never-will-be Vriska Serket. But then, no-one else ever tried.

So much for that.

Privately, you puzzle over how exactly to mourn her. According to her own logic, she was legitimately beaten. According to everyone else’s she was collateral damage. There isn’t a great deal of breathing space in between, but in some discrete corner of your mind, you still reserve a quiet patch of room for regret.

In fairness, there isn’t time for much else. The critical moment waits for no-one, certainly not some troll girl’s scant remorse. The rest of you remaining have plans to unfurl, and duties to fulfil, and almost definitely a great deal of both work and dreaming to wallow in.

You, for one, have found your calling in a flash-fire fantasy.

Reality is now a bit of a moot point. It’s all a matter of spatialisation – and soon enough, you’re going to trade one reality for another. You don’t doubt that things will be different there – and, after this long stagnation, you revel in the thought of change.

As for the rest – you can no longer tell.

Your name is Kanaya Maryam, and today you wear a veil of your own luminescence. You’re no longer sure if you still possess balance, or good judgement, or even, really, principles. But that is a change which suits you as well.

Looking back on things, you’re not entirely sure what you have proven. But the borders lie open now, burst from their very foundations, and you greet this new, limitless hour with a strange, raw sort of happiness, mingled with sharp expectation. And so, transformed, you prepare to go on - to begin reality afresh.


End file.
